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Epic Games vs. Apple Judgment Allows App Store Developers to Link to Alternative Payment Methods
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You’re searching for meaning in the noise. If you’re comparing Aug’20-now to the early pandemic run up, then you’re cherry picking again. If you’re saying a limited release of a new CPU in the bottom tier of Macs is supposed to have a revolutionary impact on Apple’s share price, you haven’t looked at their financials.
The market went “meh”.
The lawsuit was filed in mid-August 2020, the 13th I believe. AAPL is only up about 30% from there. Apple has slightly underperformed the S&P 500 in that time, which is up about 33%. I would expect tech stocks to generally outperform the S&P 500. MSFT for instance is up about 41% in that same period.
Yeah, people get lung cancer all the time. Of course it's completely unrelated to the fact that they're a heavy smoker.
Yeah, people get lung cancer all the time. Of course it's completely unrelated to the fact that they're a heavy smoker.
I am reminded of this lady.
This 104-Year-Old Woman Says Dr Pepper Is What's Keeping Her Alive
Did Dr Pepper pay her to say this?
Causality doesn’t not necessarily imply correlation.
So if Apple is required to provide some link to outside payment, would they still get a cut of this amount? I say “if” because I’m assuming this portion will be appealed. I’m also assuming the app won’t be able to advertise a price outside the App Store in the app, and there will be some debate over the size of the link. What do you think?
I might trust any and all of the big names including Fortnite Epic - but I have many dicey apps who already try to obfuscate their name within the App Store actually.
We all get a bunch of strange company names on our visa statements already. Apple App Store too! Recently, I used some app that did a really good job of close cropping a person out of a photo. Unfortunately they wanted like $18 per month subscription! I’m sure that company counts on making more money from people who forget to cancel their “one week free” trial! I can go find the app and give you the name of it if you would like to check it out for yourself - but don’t count on things getting better once they have you going to an external website - these guys will do anything to make a buck. Happy customers is not the goal it’s extracting money that becomes the goal - even for big companies sometimes.
Many times I am within inches of calling some strange looking company names on my visa bill fraudulent transactions and then I realized that some dumb company name was actually for parking at the air show kind of thing.
And yeah I would use Apple Pay for everything pumping gas, buying beer. Amazon prime purchases.
Nobody knows. I think if it’s just a link to a website, they don’t get a cut, otherwise they do? (The injunction actually may be missing a comma or two so there’s some debate as to what it means - do they have to allow in-app third party purchases?). But how do they audit the sales? Do they provide a front-end SDK with a consistent user interface that captures all orders, and passes the info to the developer’s selected back end payment processor? No idea. Do they mandate that all third party subscriptions have to be reported to Apple so they can be cancelled from the central interface? Do they do so to enforce parental controls? Lots of questions. If it’s just links to webpages, it’s simpler - Apple mandates that you can’t have such links unless you also allow in-app purchases (which the injunction seems to allow), and charges developers a flat fee for that to make up for lost income? Or not?
I wonder how many people commenting on this post have actually read the entire 185 page ruling. Well I just spent the past few hours doing exactly that. This ruling is a HUGE win for Apple. A couple of key points. First, the court found that Apple is still entitled to charge a commission for its intellectual property. This means that whilst they will have to allow links to other payment options other than IAP, Apple can still charge those developers a commission. This is the reason that Epic has said Fortnight will not be returning to the App Store, they want to pay Apple ZERO commission and they lost that battle in the court judgement. Secondly, this is a huge win for Apple because the court judgement specifically states "The Court finds in favor of Apple on all counts except with respect to violation of California's Unfair Competition law (Count Ten and only partially with respect to its claim for Declaratory relief. The preliminary injunction previously ordered is terminated". The judgement was very well written and thought out and I think it would be very hard for either party, especially Epic to win any appeal on this. On a seperate note, the new South Korean law also does not state that Apple cannot still charge a commission, in fact that law pretty much lines up with this US court ruling, in that Apple will have to allow links to third party payment options, they are still entitled to charge a commission for their IP.
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Great news in my opinion. Maybe the Kindle app will finally be able to sell books on iOS apps again.
Amazon about 10%. How did AAPL compare to the S&P 500 from July 2020?
We can all pick our favorite data points from a bunch of noisy series, but no matter how you slice it, today’s change was insignificant. No idea what to expect over the coming months, but the market is just weak support for any argument that Apple ”lost“ here.
Just finished reading thru the Court Documents.
The Judge got it wrong on a couple of very important points !
I don't think she really knows the App Store.
Anyway, I tweeted my take on those points to Sweeney, & CC'd Cook & Cramer.
Now, IMO, is the absolute perfect time to try to affect positive change for the NON-Game part of Apple's "curated" App Store !
And, the court documents can be used as Ammo to affect positive change !
The Judge got it wrong on a couple of very important points !
I don't think she really knows the App Store.
Anyway, I tweeted my take on those points to Sweeney, & CC'd Cook & Cramer.
Now, IMO, is the absolute perfect time to try to affect positive change for the NON-Game part of Apple's "curated" App Store !
And, the court documents can be used as Ammo to affect positive change !
I would not bet on that; Apple just needs to change its developer agreement; even the judgement said Apple is entitled to compensation for its IP.
It also did not say Apple had to allow only IAP outside of teh App Store, Apple could also require any IAP to be made available the App Store even if the developer offers it outside of the App Store as well.
And what part of 15/30 is not the card processing fee, it’s the commission charged that includes processing. Apple could build or has already built an API for this. Developer can choose between giving Apple 30 percent or choosing their own payment processor and only forking over 25 percent.
Thanks for reading and reporting on it. At a high level, it seemed to be a win for Apple, without knowing the details. From what you’re saying, it seems like an even bigger win in terms of a basis for future cases.
I didn’t think a court would stipulate a certain commission, and providing a link doesn’t necessarily mean a user would prefer this outside the App Store (I certainly wouldn’t).
The bigger piece that Epic wanted seems to be allowing third party stores for buying apps. The judgement seems to have shut down this possibility — do you concur?
It is absolutely the case that Apple does not have to allow third party app stores.
No. Supply and demand; the value of one can be high for good reason.
Users can select others. Persuade them.
Sure Apple will lose some business, but they'll have incentive to remain excellent and preferable.
Sure I use CC online, but that doesn't mean stuff can still go sideways and be a costly hassle to straighten out (stolen card #, doubled purchases, hours spent on hold waiting for service, etc). With Apple I know what I'm getting, and little reason to use others.
I think it was pretty obvious right from the start that the judge would not have the power to force Apple to allow third party app stores anyways. Epic probably knew this as well, but shot for the moon and brought as many lawsuits as they could against Apple in the hopes that at least one would stick.
This is a business contractual dispute through and through, and the judge can only arrive at a judgement using the existing laws as written, not come up with her own. The only way to force Apple into opening up the App Store would be via new laws that have to be written and then passed by Congress, something that seems unlikely in the current political climate.
So Apple is free to charge whatever commission they want (heck, they could charge gaming companies 50% if they wanted, because it's their platform), but the idea is that consumers (and developers) at least have a way around this by being able to offer their own payment systems, even if it ends up being more cumbersome.
I will say that consumers may well end up being the biggest losers, because I expect all the freemium gaming app companies to suddenly start spamming users with ads and emails on how they can circumvent iTunes when purchasing IAPs, resulting in a worse user experience for everyone. But since I don't play such games to begin with, I will just sit back and watch that proverbial part of the world burn.
This lawsuit was never about empowering smaller developers or benefiting consumers. Won't it be ironic if consumers ended up begging Apple to kick out third party payment options ultimately, because of how developers may end up abusing them? 🤣
I wonder what would have happened if Epic hadn't already made that "1984" video and had it ready to deploy the moment after they were kicked out of the App Store for violating their contract?
That always seemed like a richard move.
That always seemed like a richard move.
Amusing that all this was over ... nothing.
Epic was selling, for real money, virtual tokens to briefly allow a game to do what it could already do.
Apple wanted a cut of this.
Anyone criticizing Apple over this case must likewise criticize Epic for doing exactly the same thing: pay for access.
Epic was selling, for real money, virtual tokens to briefly allow a game to do what it could already do.
Apple wanted a cut of this.
Anyone criticizing Apple over this case must likewise criticize Epic for doing exactly the same thing: pay for access.
I wonder what would have happened if Epic hadn't already made that "1984" video and had it ready to deploy the moment they were kicked out of the App Store for violating their contract?
That always seems like a richard move.
I don’t think the Judge let that influence her decision. It probably *was* relevant to the preliminary injunction Apple got against Epic, though - it was evidence of intent to break the contract, etc.
Great news for Apple and their users. The other points seem fairly insignificant.
I believe the judge even hinted at the compromise to Apple during the trial, so some speculated they were laying the groundwork for this possibility?
Surprised at the negative overreaction to the judgement.
Exactly... Epic was *totally* ready for it.
They knew they were violating the contract and had their response video all cued up.
Premeditated response!